Overcoming A Divided Self

Like all of us, I also experience life in a fragmented way. I desire the good, but often sow the seeds of what's not good. I want to do what's right, but make decisions that lead to the opposite road.

In this life, there seems to be a never-ending tug of competing demands: family and work, spirituality and worldly concerns, livelihood and self-fulfillment, distance and closeness, solitude and community, silence and words, and so on. Such only contributes to the inner difficulties already present.

It has nothing to do with how much education, possessions, talents, or status I have. Instead, it has to do with something within my being that seeks to find a unity. I wonder whether we'll ever find a complete integration of all of life's diversity. As for me, I find that such a wholeness or unity inside our being can only be attained as a form of hope.

Sometimes, crises do have a way of bringing us to better unity within our being with a fresh experience of God. These crises become good opportunities for God to minister to our fragmented selves or troubled souls. We get empowered to receive our identity, security, and significance from God. So, in the process, we gain strength to emerge whole and integrated within our being.

The Apostle Paul once confessed, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do; but what I hate, I do ... As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.... For in my inner being I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin ... Who will rescue me from this body of death? THANKS BE TO GOD -- THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD!" (Romans 7:15-25).

Overcoming a "divided self" therefore happens when we live in truth and love that come from Him. By responding to the One who calls us to integrity and unity within our being, we can experience life as joyful and meaningful. All of us need to grow into that kind of stature.